I love guest designer weeks and today we are treated to two amazing sketches by our wonderful friend and fan, Van Nguyen. I also love when the steal that a guest gets to work with happens to be an outstandingly cute collection as is today’s steal the American Crafts Hello Sunshine collection.

Van, take it away!

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So let us all rewind back to the beginning of August and take a peek into an email conversation I had with Kristy Lee (our mojo maker extraordinaire) and Lisa Mack (our scrappy buyer powerhouse).

Kristy Lee:How do you feel about being our guest sketcher for October? I know it’s early but we like to plan. Me:Um, YES!! Oh…wait. ::hitting myself over the head:: I can’t. We will be traveling for most of September and October. So, I think that’s a no. ::hanging head in shame:: Kristy Lee:Well, it’s only August. What if we got you stuff to play with now?? Calling Lisa… Lisa Mack:Done. Me:What do you mean done? Lisa Mack: Tell me who you love and I’ll send something out by the end of the week. Me:Kristy Lee and Lisa Mack, I love you.

Okay…enough of that…onto the more important stuff.

Let me first just rave a about the American Crafts Hello Sunshine collection. It is gorgeous! Drop dead stunning. Beautiful bright colors. Adorable patterns. High quality paper. And the printed craft paper – to DIE for. But in addition to all this paper, you also get two sets of these amazing Thickers (which may be one of my favorite fonts ever), dimensional stickers (which make adding embellishments so easy), chipboard borders, a massive sticker book, and printed ribbon! In all honesty, this might be my all time favorite kit.

Now, here is the sketch for the week.

And this is what I made with it.

There are a couple of things I wanted to highlight about this:

Circle Die Cut: First, I really wanted to highlight the beautiful patterned paper. So using a die-cut circle in kraft as my guide, I arranged a number of 2×2 squares to make a faux quilt. I also added faux stitching with my white gel pen (because, let’s be serious – I don’t even know where my sewing machine is these days).

Main Title: “This Girl” — The American Crafts paper die cuts beautifully. I used my Cricut to cut out the title (from Kerri Bradford Studios) and there was not a single snag in sight. I used a lace sticker from the Remarks sticker book to add a center to the flower just behind the main title.

Subtitle: I won’t lie. I added the subtitle just so I could use the Thickers – which are beautiful. They are printed with a white lace background which is so subtle and feminine.

Journaling Strips: Each sheet of paper has a tear-apart border strip that, conveniently enough, is also the perfect size of my little journaling strips.

Butterfly Elements: To highlight the white on white die cut background I made (using an EK success border punch), I punched out some extra border strips using the patterned paper and added American Crafts photo turns to create butterflies.

Here is a close-up of the butterfly element strip along the bottom.

Just for fun, and because i was dying to use some of the lantern elements in the other papers, I made a second layout as well.

With this one, I really wanted to use the lantern elements from one of the printed kraft sheets. So I cut each lantern out and “strung” them along a piece of embroidery floss. To create the sense of twinkling lights, I swirled some white paint (using a paint daubers) behind each lantern and then sprayed the white swirls with glimmer mist. The little star stickers are also from the Remarks sticker book in the kit.

Here’s a close-up of the lanterns.

And just for kicks, here’s a sketch if you so desire.

Finally, here is a card made with this gorgeous collection as well.

The raindrops on the printed kraft were just begging to be paired with these whimsical umbrellas. So I punched out some of the umbrellas using a 2-inch circle punch and mounted them on scallop circles. I also layered three different ribbons to create a border strip along the center of the card.

Could you also image how perfect these papers would be for a baby or bridal shower layout? The possibilities are endless and I think I might have to steal another kit for myself. I love it that much.

Thanks again to Kristy Lee, Lisa Mack and the ScrapbookSteals community for this amazing and wonderful opportunity. I had so much fun creating these layouts and cards and can’t wait to see what you make!

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Van, thank you! Your creations are absolutely stunning and I can’t wait to see what creations start popping up on our Facebook Fan page.

Now as if this week hasn’t been exciting enough it’s now time for our two giveaways.

First off our lucky random winner of the Topaz #10 is Deborah Johnson.

Deborah, please send an email with your address to customerservice@stealnetwork.com and we will be happy to send a prize out to you.

Now it’s time for the announcement of our lucky Topaz prize pack winner. ::::drum roll:::::

Congratulations goes out to Charissa Miller. Lucky #15.

You should be proud of your dedication and hard work over the past 10 weeks (as should everyone! ). As a reward you are the winner of the Kiwi Lane Designer Template / My Minds Eye Lime Twist prize package. If you will send our service department an email with your address we will get your prize sent out to you and get you all set up to jump into our Opal series with flair!

For those of you that have questions about Mid Week Mojo and want to join in as we begin our next series of 10 sketches, you can find all of the information here. Also, as we continue week to week, bookmark this page for your quick reference to Mid Week Mojo links.

Congrats again to you lovely winners, thank you again to our amazing guest desginer Van, and the warmest of welcomes to our Opal Club series.